HARRISBURG — Sen. Dawn Keefer (R-31) praised President Donald J. Trump’s revocation of the 2009 Chesapeake Bay Protection and Restoration Executive Order (EO) and called on the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) to stop forcing municipalities to chase moving targets measured by flawed models.
“For 17 years, states used EO 13508 to impose rain taxes and ever-expanding programs that hammered municipalities across the watershed,” said Keefer. “President Trump’s EO 14428 finally gives Pennsylvania communities a chance to reassess the programs, the methodology and the results.”
The 2009 order forced Cumberland and York counties to spend millions meeting arbitrary, ever-changing water quality mandates. Despite cutting millions of pounds of nitrates, sulfates and sediment, DEP kept York County in its sights, second only to Lancaster County. Every new phase meant more spending and more work.
Keefer and other York County legislators joined county officials in 2017 and 2018 to challenge U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and DEP reports. EPA withheld credit for best practices because of data submission format. DEP relied on outdated modeling instead of actual measurements. Those objections went nowhere.
In 2020, York County President Commissioner Julie Wheeler partnered with the county planning commission, conservation district, York County Farm Bureau and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) on a 10-year in-stream monitoring program — the first of its kind in the nation. USGS now tracks nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment at six major York County water sources.
The halfway results demolished DEP’s 2019 computer estimates. DEP reported 900% more sediment than actual data acquired through USGS monitoring stations. Nitrogen was about half of what DEP claimed. Phosphorus was 17% better. DEP reported 957 million pounds of sediment; USGS found a four-year average of about 105.7 million pounds. Nitrogen was nearly 12 million pounds in the model versus 7.2 million pounds in the water. Phosphorus was 446,995 pounds on paper and 370,064 pounds in the stream.
“York County led the nation,” said Keefer. “Farmers, conservation officials, planners and county leaders tested the water and produced the data. They got little more than an attaboy.”
DEP has not reconciled its models with that record. York County keeps spending thousands of dollars every month on real monitoring while chasing new DEP targets, including a fresh “total volume” standard.
Keefer is calling on DEP to review Pennsylvania’s Municipal Separate Storm Sewer System requirements tied to the 2010 Chesapeake Bay Total Maximum Daily Load, Watershed Implementation Plans, Chesapeake Bay Pollutant Reduction Plans, EPA Bay policies and later permit obligations. The review should separate what the law independently requires from what was added under the now-revoked federal order, and it should test those targets against actual monitoring data.
“A revoked executive order is not a blank check to keep billing homeowners,” said Keefer. “DEP needs to tell communities what remains legally required, give York County credit for the improvements it has already documented, and put real stream data ahead of another round of model-driven fees.”
CONTACT: Crystal Patterson, 717-432-1730